Reprise
by AlphaLocke
Summary: All the foreknowledge in the world won't save a life that can't be saved.
1. Fifth Iteration

_**Reprise**_

Disclaimer: I own nothing of importance, and I'd say Castle is quite important.

Fifth Iteration:

By now, he had begun to lay out the rules of the game. At first he was far too shocked to believe it wasn't a dream, but starting to blubber and cry right after being held as a human shield apparently caused you to get sent in for a bit of therapy, especially when you're ranting about things that are obviously impossible. That broke the rules.

On the second trip he lasted for a case before he started screaming in the middle of the station. Esposito tackled him before he fired but after he had taken Ryan's gun and waved it in the air. That broke the rules.

Third time through he doesn't even resist while Harrison has a gun on him. That broke the rules.

This time though, things will be different. After Harrison was arrested, he had gone into his office and sat alone for 24 hours, typing. He made lists of everything he knew, everything he guessed at, and everything that was lucky chance the first time around. He noticed that the last two lists were a lot longer than the first.

He makes little changes at first. First he manages to keep Max alive by wondering why the kids didn't just pay the dealer off 24 hours earlier. Then he "notices" the elevator timing earlier on, preventing the hostage situation. Finally, he wonders if finances had anything to do with Horn's murder, leading to a quick inquiry into Laurie Horn's monetary situation and her early arrest. The hard earned knowledge from before gives him an advantage in every crime they encounter, and he intends to use that information to slowly begin to close the noose around Coonan and the others responsible while also hopefully saving lives by speeding up the closure of cases. Richard Castle feels good about his chances now that he has a plan.

Kate Beckett dies from a GSW inflicted by Frank Nesbit while attempting to place him under arrest.


	2. Twelfth Iteration

Disclaimer: I have loans. If I owned Castle, I wouldn't have had to take out said loans.

Twelfth Iteration:

Richard Castle sat on a beach, staring out at the Pacific. His beach really, as having a fair amount of cash allows one to purchase plenty of private land, even beachfront property. This was especially true since he no longer had the drain of the giant NY apartment, which cost more each month than most folks made in a year.

Yes, Castle had fled. He simply couldn't take anymore of New York, and once he had control he transferred Alexis to a new school in California, informed his mother and publisher, and left town. Alexis had not been happy, to say the least, and Martha had been quite shocked. Frankly, Castle hadn't cared. Oh, he cared in some deep, abstract sense, but his more conscious mind had just spent the last 6 go-arounds finding new and exciting ways to kill himself, so it was a little past worrying about what his family thought for the moment. As obviously none of that had been permanent enough to stop this damned cycle, Castle figured that for now the best possible solutions were alcohol and women, both in copious amounts.

And so that's what he did. He drank all day and spent every night chasing the bikini-covered twenty-somethings. He stopped writing, and stopped answering the call from his publisher, and stopped communicating with his Mother. Alexis eventually stopped trying to understand what had happened, and on her 18th birthday she moved out. He paid for her place; even in his current state he knew that he owed her that much. And every few days he went to bed with a different girl, but he could never stop seeing her face in his head. And every day he died a little more inside.

And now three years and change had passed. His family never called him anymore. Most of the women in the area had heard of him and weren't too eager to sleep with the creepy rich playboy who talked about "Beckett" in his sleep, especially since he was on the verge of losing the "rich" adjective (the fact that some women were still eager to sleep with him wasn't exactly a selling point for them). He was alone, physically and mentally. Luckily, alcohol didn't discriminate, and as such he spent most nights in a bottle.

Every once in a while he would walk out onto his porch and start screaming at the night. Most of it was either unintelligible or obscenities, but a careful observer would be able to pick out a certain repeated line: "You told me to learn to let go! WELL I'VE LET GO!" Then Richard Castle would stop shouting, and stare silently at the stars with tears running down his face as he took another swig of cheap whiskey. Once the bottle was gone, he would turn around, walk into his house, turn off the lights, and cry himself to sleep.

Kate Beckett dies from what looks to be a mugging gone wrong.


	3. First Iteration

Disclaimer: If I owned Castle, then I wouldn't be going to school in a week. I am going to school next week, and the contrapositive of the previous statement is true.

First Iteration:

When Castle woke up, she was still there. Snuggled up next to him, her hair spread across his pillow. She had that soft little teasing smile that showed up when she knew something he didn't, although it was funny to see it on her when she wasn't awake. He tried to get out of bed without disturbing her, but she just put her arm around him and pulled him in tight. So he lay back down, relaxed, and enjoyed the feeling of Kate Beckett sleeping next to him. And that was the way it was supposed to be.

Later, some time after both he and Kate woke up again, Castle got out of bed, and began fixing breakfast. Kate of course offered to help, but Rick insisted that as it was his house, he would be making his world famous waffles, and she would sit there and relax. So it was that he stood there, preparing food while Kate told him about what had happened with the case, and everything was perfect. He could see this, in the future. He could see this every damn day.

So it was that Castle was in his happy place while cooking and listening, and as such he wasn't paying as much attention as should have been. He'd always been good at finding the connections between small facts and strange coincidences, but even when he was on top of his game it generally took a night at home for the pieces to come together. He was only human after all. Then there was a knock at the door, and he went over to open it, and suddenly he was out of time.

The next thing he remembered was being on the floor with a burning pain in his chest and neck. There was yelling, and then several loud noises, and he noticed someone else lie down. The man (and when did he get here?) walked over to Kate (ah, that's who else was lying down) and said something about protection or blackmail or…a wolf?, and then there was another loud noise, and the man walked away. For some reason Rick knew he should go over to Kate, even though she was just taking a nap, but when he tried to move his body just didn't really want to, so he didn't. As he lay there things suddenly seemed sad, which didn't make much sense to him as now he wasn't really hurting as much, but he only felt sadder as things went on, like even though he was feeling much better now and the pain had gone away completely he still knew something was wrong, so he tried to ask Kate what was wrong, but she was still asleep, and that just seemed even more wrong, but whenever he tried to think about why it was wrong it all just slipped away…

Kate Beckett dies from multiple GSWs approximately two minutes before Richard Castle does.


	4. Eighteenth Iteration

Disclaimer: If I owned Castle all I would do is swim in my piles of money.

Eighteenth Iteration:

Years ago Castle had heard a story. Apparently, in some elite military branches, new recruits are each given a puppy on the first day of training. This puppy would be the recruit's responsibility; he must feed the puppy, water the puppy, clean up after the puppy, and play with the puppy. Over the course of the program the recruits were interviewed about their puppy, and any that were determined to have failed to form a sufficient bond with that puppy were bounced from the training, as if they couldn't care for a puppy then they couldn't care for the men they served with. Finally, once the soldiers have completed their training, the officers gather them one by one in a room, and tell them how good of a job they have done, and that all they have to do to join the unit is to complete one final task. Then that soldier's puppy is brought in, and the recruit is handed a knife, and told that he has to kill it in order to graduate.

The whole point of the exercise was that a soldier had to be able to care about comrades (thus keeping the complete sociopaths out that otherwise might sell the squad out), but also to allow for the fact that a soldier must be able to sacrifice his team when ordered to do so for a good reason. Apparently the idea was called desensitization therapy. Castle's research had revealed that the story was most likely an urban legend, which was good since he felt that it seemed just too cruel for him to use as a plot point. Some things don't need to be written about, even when they were happening to fictional characters. Besides, he always did like dogs.

At this point, Castle felt like he was one of those recruits, except worse.

He had spent three runs on the beach, although it was a different beach, on a different continent, each time. Apparently over ten combined years of boozing, philandering, and self-hating wasn't enough to get over the love of his life, and eventually each trip would end with him going to bed one night and waking up in the middle of a hostage situation. He was getting better at handling the sudden reawakening, and Beckett wasn't looking at him quite as funny as before (she still looked at him funny, but then he seemed to remember her looking at him funny for most of that first year, like she couldn't decide whether to shoot him or grab her handcuffs and…and that's enough down that rabbit hole). Plus, he seemed to have noticed a pattern with the cycle. While he had been far too drunk to know the date of his last day of the first beach trip, he seemed to recall that it was sometime in May, and on his last two trips he had reawakened on what would have been May 16th.

Kate had come over to his place on May 14th.

The unknown gunman had killed Kate and himself on May 15th.

Most likely this wasn't coincidence.

So, Castle now knew he had a timeline. He had at a maximum until the May three years after he met Beckett to fix things, but any direct changes he made just seemed to get her killed. Quite the conundrum, really.

Rick was still pretty good at solving puzzles of course, but this one stumped him. He just couldn't seem to get past the fact that if his interference wasn't perfect then Kate would die, seeming to imply that he might have to get her killed an inordinate amount of times in order to get to the end of this charade of life, and even then the whole game might end on May 15th. He was in a rut.

And then inspiration struck him.

So he went about the cases like normal, with no deviations, but he memorized as many details as possible. And when he was off case, he subtly interrogated Beckett, asking her all sorts of little things, the things that were inconsequential but that only she would know. Much of this he knew already, but he had missed her, and it was best to make sure he had the details down pat. And, eventually, when he did mess up, he was sad, but it was more of the sadness one felt when a friend is moving away, rather than heading to their final rest.

Kate Beckett dies from multiple GSWs inflicted while attempting to protect the mob informant Jimmy Moran.


End file.
